48 full-page color-printed woodcuts. 26.5 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. orange semi-stiff wrappers (quite rubbed), orig. title-slip, new stitching. Osaka, Edo, & Kyoto: Akitaya Taemon 秋田屋太右衛門, 1841.

Second edition, “newly carved,” of this poetry anthology on the theme of various crafts and professions. The artist Gakutei (1786-1868) was a “man of many parts, a kyōka composer and a translator of Chinese literature into Japanese; and though he was probably never as natural and instinctive a master of the brush as Hokusai and one or two of his more gifted pupils, he undoubtedly had an original cast of mind…[he was] one of... More